If there is going to be a return to the Met Police expanding controversial ” stop and search ” of mainly black youths in London to combat rising knife crime – this is nothing compared to an initiative planned by police chiefs in Rotterdam to tackle suspected drug dealers.

The Dutch police are planning to stop and search young people wearing designer gear in the city if they will decide they are too poor to be kitted out in Gucci jackets. If they don’t believe they should be wearing them, they are going to confiscate them on the spot.

Frank Paauw, chief of Rotterdam police, is reported to have told De Telegraaf ( in Dutch). ” We are going to undress them in the street”.

“These young people have no income, sometimes even debts from a previous conviction, but also wear an outfit that exceeds 1500 euros. That is undermining the rule of law if you make it very big, but also a completely false signal to local residents. Taking away is therefore important, “says Paauw.

Police will be on the lookout for include “big Rolex[es], Gucci jackets, all those kinds of clothes,” the department spokesperson said. One wonders what would happen if they are wearing Calvin Klein boxer shorts.

“Police won’t consider a white guy walking around in an expensive jacket to be a potential drug dealer,” said Quincy, a 20-year-old man. “But it’ll be a different story with minorities.”

It strikes me if you happen to be black or from other minorities Rotterdam might not be the best place to go for a weekend trip.

More disturbingly what would happen if this type of action caught on. In an era when the new Tory vice chairman for youth,Ben Bradley, the 28 year old MP for Mansfield, in his youth called for more ” police brutality”, and vasectomies for men on the dole, you never know what will happen.

Perhaps he might suggest it as a new manifesto policy to attract young voters to the Tories or to attract former ” law and order ” UKIP voters back into the fold. The only disadvantage for the latter is that it is happening in Europe.

Frankly to me it seems a very daft and dangerous idea – yet another move to raise racial tensions and stereotyping black youth – rather similar to police stopping an Afro Caribbean just because he is driving a sports car or an expensive 4×4.

During both the first and second world wars my family came under suspicion and attack from people because our family name Hencke is German. At one stage we even considered changing it or Anglicising it to something like Henkey.

The reason was that we were at war with Germany and although our family left Germany via Holland in 1862 and we were virulently anti Nazi ( my mother is Jewish after all) the hatred of the foreigner was very high at this time.

Since the Brexit campaign there has been an upsurge in nasty, vicious attacks on EU people staying and working here and racist attacks against ethnic minorities which we have not seen for some time.

Frankly I blame Nigel Farage, UKIP and both Boris Johnson and Michael Gove for giving respectability and legitimacy to people who have held these views privately to think they can now openly harass foreign workers in this country.

By promising to quit the European Union and ” take control ” people have been given the impression that we can stop immigration altogether and that perhaps their wish that people could be sent home will be granted.

They have been told that all their problems getting jobs, housing, places for their kids in school, hospital operations and even traffic jams and waiting in queues are all the fault of immigrants. If they left everything would be wonderful.

This monstrous lie was perpetuated in split screen TV campaign broadcasts by the Brexit campaign. Any sane person would know that this is far more complicated.than that.

But what has been alarming is the reaction. People attacked on a Manchester tram, women abused in the street, someone quizzing people on their nationality in a supermarket queue and telling the till staff to serve British born people first. Others have been nastier including abusing Polish kids at school, putting nasty messages through Polish people’s letterboxes and daubing German made cars (presumably bought by British people) with swastikas. And there was the nasty graffiti on the Polish centre in Hammersmith, west London.

It is soon going to become very obvious that people are NOT going to get what they want from Boris Johnson. Immigration will not stop, they are not going to be miraculously rehoused and immigrant’s children are not going to be removed from school. All because this depends on policies that have nothing to do with immigration – such as house building or providing enough places in schools.

So what should be done. There should be a crackdown on people who do this to show it is unacceptable.

But there also should be action to explain to people that if they want to live in dynamic, prosperous, modern society it is going to be a multi racial and diverse and people of different beliefs, race and sexuality all have something to contribute. We are no longer a pale male and stale society and can’t turn the clock back centuries. That is why I think London rejected the Brexit case.

The problem is that we are left with a nasty backlash from people who see they have been left behind and want to take it out on anybody who is different to them. That must be tackled or we slip into a nasty, divisive country that no one will want to stay in.